Recently I've really been getting into Italian crime fiction in a big way. I began by reading Roberto Saviano's amazing and chilling non-fiction book Gomorrah, then sought out the equally superb TV series. Last night, I watched Suburra, a 2015 crime epic directed by Stefano Sollima, one of Gomorrah's three directors.

Like the TV series, Suburrais an intensely detailed and bleak account of systemic criminal corruption in Italy. As opposed to Naples, where Gomorrah takes place, Suburra is set in Rome - meaning that senior politicians, the Roman mob, and even the Pope are implicated in all the seedy events that take place. It's brilliant, harrowing stuff driven by a great script and a fine ensemble cast. It's quite labyrinthine, so I decided to create this chart showing just some of the complex relationships. You can download a PDF copy below.

Stefano Sollima is the son of Sergio Sollima (1921 - 2015), director of three of the best Italian western films ever made. Right now he's working on Soldado, the sequel to Denis Villeneuve's 2015 film Sicario, which was also a favourite of mine - it's in safe hands. Suburra is also being made into a Netflix series - so there's plenty more Italian crime goodness still to come.

Lethal Weapon may not have launche the buddy-cop genre as such - Walter Hill's 48 Hrs. (1982) was just one of its antecedents - but it definitely helped to cement and popularise this enduringly popular idea. Played by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover respectively, Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh are now the archetypal buddy cops. They reunited for three sequels up until 1998, were parodied in Loaded Weapon 1 (1993), and have been re-imagined and re-cast for a 2016 TV series.

Besides launching the franchise and boosting the buddy-cop subgenre, Lethal Weapon was a trendsetting film for a number of other reasons. It launched Mel Gibson's career in the US, turned Shane Black into a screenwriting superstar, and is even a milestone in the use of martial arts sequences in American action films. The film's commercial success and continued influence are clear enough, but were the product of a very specific set of ingredients combined together by veteran director Donner.

In 2016, Hollywood has continued to labour under a pall of familiarity. Ever in search of "sure things", the big studios have doubled-down once again on sequels, remakes, reboots, "re-imaginings", and spin-offs. Where something new is promised - as with, say, Doctor Strange- we're often left disappointed. That's where The Accountant comes in: a genuinely somewhat novel, if flawed, thriller which serves as a breath of fresh air.

​Conscious of the risk of superhero fatigue, Marvel has made much of the idea that Doctor Strange deviates from their usual formula. Some particularly dazzling visuals aside, it actually largely retains the feel of previous films in the MCU - with the strengths and weaknesses that tends to imply. However, powered by the performances of a strong cast, it overcomes the flaws in its story and should keep Marvel's fire burning well into 2017.

Recently, Paul Bramhall of City on Fire published an important article on the corrosive impact of piracy on martial arts and action cinema. In it, Bramhall explains how the decline in the budgets of today's independent action films is caused in part by piracy, which cuts the profitability of new productions. The article also discusses the apparently low demand for new (albeit sometimes dubious) Blu-Ray releases of older Asian action films. I broadly agree with Bramhall's points and they're worth a read.

I wanted to pick up some of the issues in the article and and to look at what I think is the other side of the problems action cinema is facing. In addition to a crisis of piracy, we also have what might be called a crisis of availability. What I mean by this is that in 2016, Asian action cinema is less visible and less widely available in the West than it has been for years - despite the advent of video on demand. These two crises are feeding into one another, creating a downward spiral: as fewer Asian action films see legitimate releases in the West, more consumers watch pirate releases. This in turn creates a sense that legitimate releases are not viable, and fewer occur. Clearly, this is not the only reason for piracy; there will always be those that choose not to pay. But like piracy itself, the crisis of availabilty is, for me, contributing to the existential threat to Asian action cinema fandom in the Western world.

Over the last few years there has been a big rise in the number of action-oriented American productions filmed in the UK, from Fast and Furious 6 (2013) to Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015). This is just the latest in the country's many contributions to action cinema, which have also included the James Bond series and work of Vic Armstrong, perhaps the greatest stuntman of all time. However, precious few action films can be called British productions because the UK film industry has traditionally focused on drama and horror films. Recently, British genre cinema seems dominated by a seemingly endless tide of miserable low-budget crime films starring the likes of Danny Dyer and Vinnie Jones.

Up-and-coming British director Eran Creevy sought to change that with his 2013 film Welcome to the Punch. Having had success with the BAFTA-nominated microbudget crime film Shifty, Creevy secured the support of executive producer Ridley Scott and set his sights on something much more ambitious: a London-set action crime film strongly influenced by Hong Kong cinema and the works of Michael Mann. Sadly but perhaps not surprisingly, the film failed to attract all that much attention – but with Creevy's next effort being released this year, it definitely deserves another look.

My first experience of Michael Mann's work was seeing Heat (1995) several years ago. It was one of those rare films which impressed me tremendously right from the first viewing, and it's even grown on me over the years to the point where it's one of my top ten films. None of the Mann films I've seen subsequently have impressed me quite as much, but I always welcome the opportunity to catch another one.

I picked up Arrow Video's 2015 release of Mann's first theatrically-released film, Thief, in an excellent HMV sale. The five discs I bought are the first ones I've owned, but I've rented around ten of their other releases and they are all superb. Arrow may just the best film distributor operating in the UK right now, and their release of Thief is the perfect way to be introduced to this fascinating early work by Mann.

​Martial Arts Gold was a short season of classic Shaw Brothers martial arts films broadcast on Film4 in the UK each Friday from January 15th to February 5th. The films were presented at their original aspect ratio and in their original language, complete with English subtitles. I'll be putting together a review for each film in the season, as well as for the films shown in a second season due in March and April. The season continued with Come Drink With Me on January 29th - here's another belated review.

Martial Arts Gold is a short season of classic Shaw Brothers martial arts films being broadcast on Film4 in the UK each Friday from January 15th to February 5th. Every film is being presented at its original aspect ratio and in its original language, complete with English subtitles. I'll be putting together a review for each film in the season, as well as for the films shown in a second season due in March and April. The season continued with King Boxer on January 22nd – here's my belated review.

Martial Arts Gold is a short season of classic Shaw Brothers martial arts films being broadcast on Film4 in the UK each Friday from January 15th to February 5th. Every film is being presented at its original aspect ratio and in its original language, complete with English subtitles. The season kicked off with Lau Kar-leung's iconic 1978 film The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. I'll be putting together a review for each film in the season, as well as for the films shown in a second season due in March and April.